Mark E. Murphy
We were driving home after dinner when we saw it.
"Look! Over there!" Daphne said, pointing at something in the half-light of dusk. And then I saw the creature rummaging through the pine straw in our yard - a tiny four-legged version of the Merrimack, the famed Confederate ironclad.
"That's an armadillo!" I said, putting the car in park.
When I was a child growing up in south Georgia, armadillos occupied a minor spot in the pantheon of legendary creatures that were frequently talked about but rarely seen, animals that scuttled and growled in the collective imaginations of children from Tybee Light to Rabun Gap. The skunk ape, the swamp panther, the Lizard Man and the Altamaha River Monster were the big ones, all right-but armadillos were clumped right there with them.
A few years back, however, we began seeing armadillos as road kill whenever we dared to venture into the desolate palm-studded wastelands of northern Florida. The tank-like creatures, known to physicians for their unique ability to contract leprosy, traversed the Georgia border around 1980 and marched inexorably northward ever since. Still, until the other night, I had never seen one in my yard. The little guy was enthusiastically rooting around among our lantanas with its pointed snout and clawed forelegs, digging up flowers which had been planted only a few short weeks earlier.
I leapt from the car and flailed about wildly. The armadillo was completely oblivious at first, but then it caught sight of me with its beady little eyes and leapt into the air before scuttling across the street, dragging its leathery tail behind it.
And so we added yet another creature to the vast menagerie of animals that live among us in the unofficial exotic wildlife sanctuary known as Rose Dhu.
An island on the southside, Rose Dhu has its usual denizens, of course-the requisite squirrels, rabbits, robins, jays and doves - but the tree-filled place I live is just wild enough to host an ever-expanding retinue of more unusual species. Rose Dhu residents take inordinate pride in cataloging them. We post them on our community Facebook page, and even give them names. There have been sightings of a wild turkey, a roseate spoonbill or two, great horned owls, geese, vultures, hawks, an entire family of foxes, wayward alligators, playful otters, diamondback terrapins and bald eagles. We once found an irascible bat flopping around in a cabinet in my office. A few years back, I saw a huge indigo snake - seven feet long, at least - defy gravity and crawl straight up a palm tree.
"How is he doing that?" my sister asked.
"I have no idea." I replied.
The deer in Rose Dhu are so numerous that I actually re-planted my entire yard with deer-resistant foliage in an attempt to avoid its eventual deforestation by these "furry locusts"-only to find that our local deer have a complete lack of regard for plants that are supposed to be unattractive or somehow indigestible to them. Impervious to the ill effects sustained by less hardy members of their species, Rose Dhu deer can apparently eat whatever they want. I drove up one evening after work and my headlights illuminated a half dozen deer sitting together in my back yard. When my lights shone on them, they gazed up at me briefly with painfully bored expressions on their faces - and then went back to whatever private conversation they were having amongst themselves.
They were probably plotting which allegedly "deer-resistant" plants they were going to consume next.
Early one morning, while getting ready to go into the hospital, I heard a tremendous racket outside my bathroom window. I turned out the lights and peered outside.
The branches of a tree next to our window were moving furiously - but there was no breeze.
Slowly, I saw the silhouette of what I thought was a tiny little man climbing up the tree. He paused in the moonlight, scratched his head, and then reached up to grab the porch rail.
Heart hammering, only half concerned about the odd fact that this potential home invader was apparently a munchkin, I ran into the bedroom and grabbed my revolver. When I gingerly reopened the curtains, the diminutive burglar had placed both of his hands on the rail and had paused there, as if he were doing chin-ups. Suddenly, the munchkin hurled himself over the railing and landed squarely on our side porch with a resounding thud. I would like to say that I was brave here. I would like to detail a heroic saga of self-defense worthy of a Bruce Lee film, relating how I stood my ground and bravely faced the intruder down. But that would be a lie.
Instead, I screamed bloody murder, stumbling backward away from the window. In retrospect, it's amazing that I didn't shoot myself, or at least blast a big hole in the ceiling.
"What is it?" Daphne said.
"Someone, or something, just climbed onto our porch!" I exclaimed, nerves jangling with adrenaline.
Gingerly, I pushed back the curtain with the steel snout of the handgun-and started laughing out loud.
My poor wife thought I had gone stark raving mad.
A corpulent raccoon - the largest I have ever seen - had hauled his fat carcass over our porch railing and was grooming himself, rubbing his tiny black fingers through his fur, bandit eyes gleaming in the silvery half-light of the moon.
I rattled the window. The giant raccoon gazed up at me with complete and utter disdain and immediately went back to his grooming efforts. Given his extreme dedication, I half expected him to pull out a jar of pomade and start slicking back his fur.
A large osprey flew smack into our house one Sunday morning and was stunned. He strutted around the yard the remainder of the day, unable to fly. Daphne called the Raptor Center at Georgia Southern and asked their advice about what to do.
"Throw a blanket over its head and drive it up here to Statesboro," was the response.
"You want me to drive sixty miles down the road with a large bird of prey loose in my back seat under a blanket?" I heard my wife say.
There was silence as she listened to the response.
"Well, I'm sorry. I'm just not going to do that," she said, hanging up.
Fortunately, the osprey flew off under its own power later that afternoon.
We had an alligator living in our yard for a while. It was a small one - a mere three feet long or so - but it would get larger. As alligators are territorial and we had a small dog at the time, we decided we needed to get rid of it. We called animal control, but alligators are apparently outside their purview. A policewoman showed up at one point. We met her outside, right next to the erstwhile gator pond.
"Why don't you just shoot it?" she asked.
"Isn't it a felony to discharge a firearm inside the city limits?" I replied.
"I guess so," she said.
We didn't shoot it. Instead, the gator simply disappeared one day after a couple of city tree trimmers were seen ogling it, rope lassos in hand. No one wanted to ask them what happened to it. When we first moved to Rose Dhu twelve years ago, Daphne's grandmother Gerald Chan Sieg, (who we called G.G.), asked us why we had moved "into the country." G.G. had lived her entire life in downtown Savannah, so we thought her perspective might be a bit skewed. As it turns out, she was right. We do, indeed, live in the country - and we are grateful for it. Each morning, a twittering chorus of birds greets the dawn. The gentle susurration of the tides is the heartbeat of the marshland, bringing the shoreline back to life as it has done for millennia. We can revel in the intricate glories of nature - and, in doing so, can ourselves be rejuvenated. Indeed, there is no greater affirmation of the inherent divinity of life than what I see right outside my door. Today, the Wild Kingdom of Rose Dhu is home.
And for that, I thank God every single day.
Mark Murphy, M.D., is a Savannah physician and writer.
